Three ways SMEs can use AI to improve their CX

Why embracing AI technologies in CX isn’t just a competitive advantage, it’s a necessity in today’s customer-centric landscape.

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, customer experience (CX) is a critical competitive differentiator and AI has become a vital ingredient in shaping CX as a discipline. From personalised marketing to customer service and operations, insights generation and continuous improvement, AI can help SMEs drive business success.

While technology investments can be costly, there are plenty of AI-powered solutions out there for SME budgets as well. Interestingly enough, AI has levelled the playing field for basic capabilities, lowering the price for solutions as capabilities are more widely available and embedded now. 

While there’s a lot of hype about AI, it’s important to remember that AI is a technology, and with any technology businesses need to start with a use case, not the technology. Technology should always be seen as an enabler. 

Let’s look into three use cases showing how SMEs can leverage AI to drive CX success. 

1. Customer feedback 

Customer feedback plays a crucial role in understanding and improving customer experiences, and AI has revolutionised what’s possible. From feedback collection to analytics and recommendations, tools have matured greatly over the last one to two years. 

While there are many tools available that help businesses collect feedback (VoC platforms, survey tools, CRMs, digital / website tools, web forms, etc.) the quality of data analytics varies considerably across solutions and providers. While AI has enhanced analytics capabilities, including text analytics, businesses should check with their providers around analytics and insights dashboards before purchasing. Choosing a solution that includes text analytics and can ingest metadata for analysis is critical to understanding CX drivers, and not just calculating metrics.

AI also plays a key role in analysing feedback data beyond the traditional surveys, tapping into unsolicited feedback such as social media, online reviews, and call and chat transcripts, etc. to extract valuable insights. These insights provide a direct window into the customer experience, customer sentiment, preferences, and pain points. Leveraging AI helps businesses to truly understand their customers’ experiences and make data-driven decisions to enhance the CX. 

2. Customer service 

Customer service is a vital ingredient for CX success, and while there are concerns that AI bots are taking away frontline jobs or providing unpleasant customer experiences, they do have a role to play. If set up right, AI powered chatbots can manage and even automate routine inquiries 24/7, providing instant responses and freeing up human agents to focus on more complex issues. This increased efficiency translates to cost savings, helping businesses allocate resources more effectively.

Several chatbot platforms allow SMEs to build AI-powered chatbots for their website or social media. These platforms often have pre-built templates and drag-and-drop interfaces for easy chatbot creation.

While these bots may not be perfect yet, the quality of their capabilities continues to improve.

3. Marketing 

There are numerous marketing use cases for AI, but the one most relevant for CX is personalisation. AI can analyse vast amounts of customer data in real-time, allowing businesses to identify marketing segments and personalise outreach efforts. This can lead to more targeted campaigns with higher engagement rates. Marketing automation platforms leverage AI to optimise email marketing by tailoring subject lines, content, and sending times for each customer. While personalisation is nothing new per se, AI makes it easier for smaller businesses to tap into these capabilities.

Businesses must remember to choose AI solutions that align with their specific needs and budget. SMEs should focus on areas where AI can have the biggest impact on the CX and need to start with a use case in mind.

This article was originally published in the June 2024 issue of NZBusiness magazine. To read the issue, click here.